With an Eye to the Past

Eleanor Welsch (Part 1)

Mother of Patty Welsch, whose parents filed the landmark Federal suit over lack of care at Cambridge State Hospital

The Beginning of the Welsch Case from a Mother’s Viewpoint

(Run time 1:11)

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One time, Dick said he was up there; they didn't expect him to be coming, I guess. And there was Patty tied to the bed so she couldn't move. They found her, he found her tied there. And that, that, that really, hurt him and it made him angry. Either they did not have enough help or they did not want to be bothered.

I don't know which it was but they were very, very heavily medicated. They would do a lot of falling and it was – well, that was what my job was to express my feelings and what I saw there at Cambridge, which I did, into the courtroom.

She always looked like she was very medicated that she was in a daze. You could tell on the pictures that there was a great, great thing wrong.